


Final Girl

by creatureofhobbit



Category: Harper's Island
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-07-06 03:45:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15877854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: Madison tries to get on with her life after events of Harper's Island.





	Final Girl

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Final Girls by Riley Sager.

My name is Elizabeth Hawthorne. But that hasn’t always been my name. I was born Madison Allen.

Nine years ago, my father, grandfather, step-grandmother and aunt were all murdered on what was supposed to be my aunt’s wedding party. Her fiancé and his father were the killers. My mother and I were the only ones to survive. Some people think I should face my fears. Usually people who seem to have an opinion despite knowing nothing about it. But I don’t know if I’ll ever feel able to go back to where it all began: Harper’s Island.

 

Shea had tried to shield Madison from the bulk of the publicity in the early days after what the press were dubbing the Harper’s Island Massacre, had kept her away from the journalists who hung around the house in the hope of an exclusive. But she hadn’t been able to keep Madison away from negative attention altogether.

Some kids just used to stare at Madison as she walked past, others would whisper behind her back. A few times, people would say things to her face. “I heard she, like, actually helped that Wakefield guy, she used to call him her friend,” Isabel Harding had whispered to all her friends. “Maybe she’s just as psycho as he was.” This had prompted the rest of Isabel’s mean-girl clique to start humming the Psycho theme at her.

Then there were the kids who just wanted to ask questions, kept on about what Henry Dunn had been really like. Madison would look into their eyes, know they were desperate for some story about how he’d shown his craziness all along. But what could she say? She had known another Henry Dunn, the guy who’d given her piggyback rides, who’d made her laugh, who’d listened when she’d talked about kids she hated at school. She’d known a guy who’d made her aunt Trish happy, who’d commiserated with her father about “being a Wellington”. Madison didn’t have any of the stories these asses were looking for, anything about how she’d suspected all along that there was something not quite right about him. The one time she made the mistake of talking about the funny and nice Uncle Henry that she had known, it had just caused the kids she was talking to to go to Isabel’s little clique and tell them they’d been right all along about her. They didn’t know the nightmares she had every night, where she saw Wakefield chasing her, or where she’d see her grandfather, or Aunt Trish, or her father. Shea hadn’t wanted to tell Madison exactly how Richard had died, and eventually she’d found out through a newspaper Shea hadn’t managed to hide from her. 

The worst had been the time in her teens with the new girl in class, Rachel, who’d befriended her, got her to let down her guard for the first time in years and finally confide in someone about her nightmares, her memories of the island, of her aunt Trish, her grandfather and all their friends, even Wakefield, and then one day Madison had gone into school and seen the headline on the front page of the school newspaper. “My Time on Harper’s Island: Madison Allen Speaks Out on her Friendship with Serial Killer John Wakefield”. Rachel had even got a local paper interested in the story.

Madison looked back at that incident now and wondered why she was even surprised. When her mother found out about it, she’d said something to Madison about how sometimes people are nice to other people and then they showed their true colours when they got what they wanted. She’d even thought she was helping. But Madison had then realised that actually, she should have known that all along. After all, her mother had said that to her about someone else before.

With new people, sometimes they didn’t immediately make the connection. Madison would be looking at people, seeing the same expression on all their faces, knowing they knew the name Madison Allen from somewhere but not being sure where, and then suddenly realising who she was. That was why for college, she’d decided on a new name. Since Shea had remarried a few years afterwards, Madison enrolled under her stepfather’s last name, and her middle name. It seemed the ideal compromise at the time; she was still retaining her own identity and yet using a name that wouldn’t cause strangers to flinch when they heard it, to pity or to judge her without even knowing her. 

Abby, who had said right from the start she was always willing to be a supportive ear to Madison should she ever want to talk to someone other than her mother, and had frequently been taken up on that, had understood that better than Shea did. Shea understood Madison’s need to avoid the publicity, but wished she hadn’t gone as far as changing her name from the one that Shea had given her. But Abby, who had avoided Harper’s Island for so many years, choosing to blend in in Los Angeles where fewer people had heard the story and would make the connection, she got it. She’d talked to Madison about her friend Kelly Seaver, the other girl whose mother had been found hanging, who had talked to Abby on the last day of her life about how she so longed to join her in LA, to get away from being That Girl Whose Mom Was Murdered By John Wakefield. Madison couldn’t remember Kelly, knew her only as a face in the newspaper, didn’t even think she’d met her on the island since she was really Abby’s friend, hadn’t been that close to Trish and Henry and wasn’t part of the wedding party. But she related to her as Abby told her story of how she’d longed to get lost in the crowd, how she’d gone with the dark hair and make up as a way of disguising herself as someone other than the same Kelly Seaver. 

“And although I hated my dad when he sent me away from the island early,” Abby had said, “I came to understand why he did it. In Los Angeles, I did get that escape, that anonymity. It was far enough away from Seattle that not as many people had heard the story” (not much chance of that for Madison; the fact that it was Wakefield’s second killing spree had meant that it made the news much more widely), “and as for the name thing, it actually helped after I got married. When I introduced myself to people as Abby Mance, because it wasn’t the name I was using on the island, people didn’t automatically connect me with Abby Mills, and so they wouldn’t ask me about it and then it was up to me whether or not I brought it up. So although I get where Shea’s coming from, I also understand why you made that choice, to live a life where you’re not associated with that, where you don’t have to be seen as what they call a Final Girl.”

College was her chance to make a fresh start, to meet people who hopefully wouldn’t know her as the girl from Harper’s Island. Madison was determined she would make it work.

If only she knew she would never entirely leave Harper’s Island behind….


End file.
